From Zero to Root in Sixty Minutes: Kindle Keyboard

If you ever wanted to do this, rooting is for you. This exhaustive tutorial documents the precise instructions for rooting the old e-Ink Kindles, such as Kindle Keyboard 3. A MOBI version of this tutorial is available for download, in case your Internet connection cuts out.

Requirements

Kindle Keyboard v3 or lower. Kindle Fire and other devices have their own root tutorials.

Kindle battery should be at least 1/2 charged, for applying updates.

A WiFi access point, such as a home router, for connecting to the SSH server that will run on the Kindle.

Step 2: Install Kite

Kite will create home screen launchers for any shell scripts placed in YOURKINDLEDEVICE/kite/. Launchers will appear as ordinary PDF books, but kite will ensure that they actually open as apps.

Shell scripts should be ASCII-encoded, with Unix (LF) line endings, have executable (chmod a+x somescript.sh) and prefaced with a standard shebang (#!/bin/sh).

Step 3: Setup the SSH server

An SSH server allows you to run commands and transfer files remotely onto your Kindle from another computer.

The usbnet update hack enables a secret debugging mode that treats the Search bar as a debugging console for entering commands. A brief ~usbNetwork command starts a Dropbear SSH server running on the Kindle, allowing for remote root shells. While the search bar allows root commands to be run with ~exec, typing potentially dangerous commands on an e-Ink screen is less than ideal, so we use SSH.

Note that the debugging console is mutually exclusive with the Kindle operating as a removable USB drive; you can’t do both at the same time.

On the Kindle, turn on the special debug mode by typing ;debugOn in the Search box and pressing the Enter key. To confirm that everything is working at this point, you can type ~help (or `help on Kindle 2 and below) to see a list of debugging commands. Assume Kindle 2’s always use backtick (`) instead of tilde (~).

kite will automatically create a dummy PDF book called pokemon-yellow.sh.pdf on the home screen. When opened, the “book” automatically runs the shell script, starting Pokemon Yellow.

Currently, there is no sound support in the emulator. But it’s still pretty amazing that this is even possible. Feel free to reply to the MobileRead Game Boy forum thread if you have any questions or comments.